The Future of Home Automation

The world of automated home gadgets is young and exciting, filled with an abundance of promising new products. It’s also a bit of a mess.

At the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, there were devices and smartphone apps to control everything in your home. But there are so many conflicting approaches, setups, standards and systems that the real dream of a fully connected home is still a ways off.

In previous years, the connected, or “smart,” home world was mostly aspirational, with prototypes of fridges with Internet-connected displays and elaborate home